Lisa Marie Armstrong and her family are animal lovers with a dog and three cats she considers like children. So when her cat, called Momma Kitty or Big Momma, went missing last week she was concerned.

“She had a normal routine like most animals,” she said.

These items were collected in the animal abuse investigation of Ashley Dawn Guldager in Milwaukie (Courtesy: Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office, April 25, 2013)

The Armstrongs live in the community of Oak Grove in the 1900 block of SE Sunnyslope Road and she often visited Guldager, her neighbor. But when she stopped by Monday, she said she tried to open the door to the basement bathroom. It was blocked by a makeshift table.

“(Momma Kitty’s) tail was just hanging with no life in it, and there was tape. She taped the cat to the board,” Armstrong told KOIN 6 News.

Deputies found the cat strapped down to a table with jumper cables. A light hung from a bungee cord over the table. On the table was a wet sponge, scissors, a 12-inch straight-blade kitchen knife, a plastic razor and a cigarette butt.

A necropsy of the cat determined it had died of asphyxiation.

Guldager, deputies discovered, was single and unemployed, and had been living on a couch in the home where the cat was found dead for the last month. Guldager was inside the home when deputies first arrived, the sheriff’s office said.

The person who reported the dead cat to authorities — not one of the owners — said he had walked in to find the cat dead on the makeshift table in the house. He also told deputies he suspected Guldager was mixing chemicals in the house, which he then

This is the house in Milwaukie where Ashley Dawn Guldager was arrested for aggravated animal abuse. (April 25, 2013)

moved outside the home and into the backyard. The Clackamas Fire District No. 1 was called to the scene to ensure the chemicals were safe.

Following several interviews with Guldager, she was arrested and lodged in the Clackamas County Jail on $100,000 bail. She has also been ordered to undergo a mental health evaluation.

“She was doing surgery she mutilated that cat, she took a life,” Armstrong said. “Sick people like this, they need their own planet.”